Beneath Skin
by Hillside Dancing On
Summary: Every scar tells a story, and every story leaves a marking. Saïx and Axel reflect on theirs.


**Disclaimer: **Oh, how I wish. But no.

**A/N:** Hoo, boy. I don't know what to say about this one, besides my difficulty in doing Saïx justice. It's kind of a companion piece to "All That's Left" and "Nose To the Wind" but you shouldn't need to read them to know what's going on.

For the record, I do realize that teardrop tattoos can carry different meanings. A _lot_ of different meanings.

* * *

><p>He's bleeding again.<p>

The wound reopens in the course of the night, the cross of gauze soaking through until it's not Lea's frightened voice pulling him up from sleep, but the copper and salt sticking between his lips. Shards of pain sear at him and shaking hands push at him and –

"Isa, come on. You've got to sit up..." It had taken him too long to succumb to the shock, and he can remember the first slow, deep burn between his eyes, every inch of it. His head lolls and the gauze slides off, smearing red. "There you go...there you go. Come on, I don't want it running into your throat..."

Isa groans; the ache penetrates through the bones of his sinuses and scrapes at the back of his skull, and he would give the world just to be able to lapse into sleep once more.

"Fuck...what did they do to you?" his friend whispers, not for the first time, more to himself than Isa.

But Isa remembers, of course. The man with the long, blonde hair and the empty eyes, his younger apprentice wielding the needle. The surgical table with its four point restraints, the very deliberate order against sedation that had settled like a stone in his gut. And the black light...too heavy to be proper light, running with indigo and more viscous than light should ever have been, and then it had hit him in the center of his face and he supposes that was when the screaming had begun. He swallows and tastes something thick.

"Lea? Let me see a reflection," he says, dimly surprised at the strength that creeps into his voice when no such surface is offered. "A reflection!"

A moment and a reluctant murmur of assent later, and he is braced against the thin frame of his oldest friend. They fumble over to the polished silver sink, the brightest object in this cell and the only thing to catch the hallway light that spills through the bars. With one hand, he grips the rim. Makes his eyes adjust.

And sees.

"Isa," Lea begins again, and suggests something he never would have if it had been his own injury. "I think we should try and get them back in here. It shouldn't still be bleeding, not after-"

"Shut up."

Because it's _perfect._

A neat, surgical "x" cut into the skin, starting several inches above each brow and plowing straight across the center of his nose, meeting just between his eyes and continuing on down his cheeks, so that the lower prongs barely begin to shift when he moves his lips. It's a deep red now, framed with dried blood, dripping fresh, but contrary to what Lea says, it isn't pouring out anew...and though it is dark, he thinks he can see points along the wound that gleam too pale to be flesh and make him think _daylight._

It is the most ghastly thing he has ever laid eyes upon, and exactly what he needs.

He only realizes he's begun to smile when he feels Lea shaking.

"It's fine," he whispers. "This...don't you know? This can be my reminder. I can always see it, and remember, and so will they. So will they!" He's grinning, grinning, almost _laughing _as Lea tugs him along, unresisting, back to the cot. Another tear of fabric, another swath pressed gingerly to his bleeding face, and then he settles against the stiff pillows. The world is bandage and darkness, and it dances.

"Ok...I got it, Isa. I got it."

"No, you don't," he snaps out too quickly, hits his back teeth together and makes it ache all over again. He tries to ignore it, now that he realizes this is the end, and if he can't make Lea understand the end, then how can they hope to remain together after the black light overcomes them both? "I won't be coming out again. And that's when I'll need this the most. Soon they'll take you too...whatever happens, whatever they do, find yourself something to remember all of this by. Don't let them take it all."

"You're asking me to memorize it?" Lea says, baring the most pained, humorless, frightened smile conceivable. He looks too young for nineteen...how could it be that they were born the very same week? "Okay. I'll think of something...I won't change. Promise."

Finally, something steadies within Isa. They've never broken a promise between one another. Not once. He allows his eyes to close.

"Do you...plan on hovering over me like that?"

By way of reply, the cot creaks and settles beneath Lea's weight. An arm slings over him, several degrees warmer than the air itself. "All night."

And that too holds back the pain.

Isa curls in closer, one last time.

* * *

><p>The black light will come again, and then it will all be "after." After the final walk to that room at the end of the hallway, after the cloaks have been donned and their names dutifully scarred. After the moonlight and the flames have begun to feel familiar on their fingertips and after the opportunities Saïx has been watching for begin to make themselves known. Only after all is said and done is the request made, and by then Saïx sees little reason not to fulfill it. It can't hurt to appear more imposing, after all.<p>

It takes some time to gather the tools – Vexen is fastidiously particular about the loaning out of his medical equipment, especially to new recruits – but finally it is all collected, and they take to the sitting room near the seventh floor.

"Are you certain this is what you wish?"

Axel sits down too heavily in the padded chair, arms resting inelegantly. "Positive. Right under my eyes, like I said."

He smiles as though showing off the fact that he still can. Lea never stopped smiling, not until the cell, anyway; Saïx suspects that would be one of the last things Axel can count on now. He checks over the items on the tray one final time – sterile needle, ink in muted colors. "This is your last chance to draw them out for me, if you wish."

"Naah. Upside down tear drops – I think you can handle that."

And of course, Saïx wants to tell him he's foolish to be so nonchalant about something that is for life. Isa certainly would have. But it doesn't seem to matter anymore, not now, and he rips open the little silver packet, swabs the butter soft skin just below Axel's eyes with a damp tissue that smells like the hospital. When he picks up the tiny black pencil, draws out the slim arch curving down to the sharp tip, the red eyelashes skim his knuckle and it's all so uncannily gentle, so considerate for something that will be so painful. Too reminiscent of Radiant Garden, drawing on one another's arms. It makes Saïx want to be done with it.

"Satisfactory?" he asks, passing Axel the mirror. There's something right about it, the way the sketches kill the softness of Lea's face. Viewed from a fair distance, they resemble something fiercer than tears; fangs, maybe, or daggers. Burns.

"Perfect," he replies, and Saïx picks up the needle in its plastic wrapper. Coats the end in ink, just the very end.

"Lie back and relax the muscles of your face."

Axel's eyes drift lightly shut, so Saïx supposes he's at least trying to obey, but he can't conceal the flinch when that first bite into the skin comes. This needle is long, after all, longer then they even need, part of a syringe lifted from the labs where they were first torn in two.

The outline first...purple ink bleeds out above the skin along with flecks of red, and Saïx does his best to wipe it all away between dips; he notices how bright and clear both appear as they meet the open air. He is forced to work in short, sharp jabs that make Axel's fingers twitch on the armrest and that irritates him increasingly as the minutes go by, because really, this pain is _nothing_. They strapped his Other down on the table while they cut his face to the bone and Axel is squirming over this_,_ and without even considering it he lets the tip of the needle go just a little too deep, making the younger Nobody jump and curse through his teeth.

"If you keep moving like that, I'm going to make a mistake." He briefly wonders what would have happened if he'd driven it through his eyelid, if that would have been enough to stir up an emotion.

"Sorry...sorry."

"I suppose it can't be helped," Saïx says as he dabs the blood away.

The tattoos are small, because small things have always said so much, like ortolans and fingerprints, minutes and signatures, and soon the left marking is settling into the place it will always remain. When the stab of the needle doesn't immediately return, Axel's eyes open and roll upwards towards him, flashing acid green.

"How do I look so far?"

"Befitting," Saïx allows as he pours out a drop more ink. "Every inch a member of the Organization."

"And that's exactly what we want." Axel clicks his tongue, gives a shake of the head. "I don't know...I'm telling you, you do that kind of thing a lot better than me."

"Fortunately, I'm not the one you need to be manipulating." He smooths his hand over those bright eyes until they close again and begins the second tattoo. A thousand more pinpricks. "You can go back to being yourself once we've recovered our hearts."

And the thought comes with no pain, no remorse; only a distant sense of wonder. When did they stop being themselves? Was it something that came down with the darkness, or when it became clear that the Superior wanted new personas? Or is that, somewhere in the worlds, there are two glowing eyed shadows that were once two wayward teenagers, and this existence they lead now more akin to dead leaves blowing on the grass?

Irregardless, what has been done is now signified. Lea's mark on him, his mark on Axel in turn, and Xemnas's eyes beginning to find him with the most cautious of approvals. Soon, if all goes well, there will be no going back; this is the pact they have forged. Nearly an hour later, he fills in the very tip of the second teardrop and, without flourish, so lays his signature down. Wipes the skin a final time, wipes his hands.

"There. Finished."

Axel sits up, reaches for the hand mirror, almost touches his own face before thinking better of it. The tattoos are fresh and shining, rimmed with an irritated red.

"Huh. Look at that..."

Saïx lets him look for a moment or two before he takes his chin in hand, forces it up so he can plaster the button sized pads of gauze to his face in spite of his protests.

"Keep those on for two hours, and then you can wash them lightly. When they begin to scab and harden, don't pick at them or you'll pull off the ink."

"What happens if I pull the ink?"

"Then you wind up looking like a clown, it reflects poorly on me, and the entire plan is compromised. At which point, I won't have the capacity to regret drowning you." And Axel laughs easily, as though remembering to do it just the way Lea always did when Isa threatened him, which was at least once a week.

"Just as good. I'd rather not sit through that again...I'd almost rather have you drown me."

This time, Saïx manages to ignore it. The days of calling his friend out over every stupid thing he says are long gone.

"Although I will say. Out of all the facial tattoos in the world, I can't imagine why you chose tear drops. It's not like you to be deliberately ironic."

In the middle of shaking out his stiff neck, Axel smirks at him. Beneath their bandages, Saïx imagines the new markings do the same.

"Didn't you know? Teardrop markings on the face mean you've killed someone."

"Do they, now? Well, I suppose I can't watch you at all hours of the day," he says, already turning to clean up, mentally jumping ahead to more pressing matters, like the questions he needs to work on pulling from their new coworkers. "But I'd rather you didn't go around committing murders before the time is –"

"Me and you."

Sharply, he looks up.

Axel is standing near the door, still smiling and waiting for a reply Saïx has no idea how to give; after all, _he_ had been so perfectly satisfied with surveying the mysterious group from afar, and he knows that, and Axel knows, and Isa had never been prone to softening the truth where it was most painful, but the truth had seemed so far away, so subjective when their hands were being lashed and the chemical restraints being pushed down...

And Saïx can turn every day of his nonexistence toward reversing what has been done, but he just can't find a way to respond to that. Not when the answer lies elsewhere, wherever his heart has fled.

The silence between them becomes too much for either to bare and Axel breaks first, slipping off down the hallway, taking with him his new tattoos – and one more secret to keep between them. Saïx is left alone with the stained needle, the empty room, and a whirl of thoughts that never reach his chest.

Before he retires to his room, the last thing he puts away is the hand mirror.

It's only when he looks at it that the scar feels tight.


End file.
